16 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 



Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna 

 Selborniensis ; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is 

 wanting, I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of this 

 century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately 

 appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose 

 great grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grand- 

 father, father and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest 

 in succession for more than an hundred years. This person assures me, 

 that his father has often told him, that Queen Anne, as she was 

 journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer 

 beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at 

 Lippock, which is just by, and, reposing herself on a bank smoothed for 

 that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer Pond, and 

 still called Queen's Bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction 

 the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before 

 her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy 

 the attention of the greatest sovereign ! But he farther adds that, by 

 means of the Waltham blacks or, to use his own expression, as soon as 



me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist." With how 

 much interest will the present proprietor of Selborne, or any one who can follow 

 the feeling of these letters, now visit Wolmer Forest, and compare its present 

 state with the above description. Such facts as those recorded by White, are 

 invaluable to either zoologist or botanist, and the reclamation there, with the great 

 changes which have taken place incident to the increase of population and other 

 causes, the change almost from desolation to cultivation, must have materially 

 affected the existence and distribution of the wild animals and plants. In a 

 series of years where attention has been given to the results of these unavoidable 

 changes, we have seen some species extirpated and others assume their places. 

 The influence of population on the existence and geographical distribution of 

 animal and vegetable life, with all its attendant circumstances of commerce, and 

 the necessity for increasing human food by cultivation, though comparatively 

 unperceived, is not so very slow in its results ; fifty years may almost entirely 

 change the zoology and botany of a district, and within such limited bounds as 

 Wolmer Forest, the extirpation of the black game would easily occur, though 

 cultivation, particularly on the borders of a sub-alpine county, is rather favourable 

 than the reverse for this game. Drainage makes a most important change on 

 the wild vegetation : a large extent of new plantation in the growth of half a 

 century will materially affect the character of a county, by rendering it a suitable 

 abode for animals, birds, and insects before unknown to it, and so would the 

 cutting down of extensive old woods destroy or drive away other species that 

 delighted only in them. But population and cultivation bring other evils 

 attendant upon themselves. They extirpate or reduce the numbers of the 

 rapacious animals, and allow the increase of others, which naturally follow and 

 accommodate themselves to the circumstances, finding a more abundant supply 

 of food. Rabbits have followed cultivation, and are often exceedingly injurious, 

 their rapid increase rendering their extirpation no easy matter. Books accom- 

 pany cultivation, are familiar birds, and accommodate themselves easily ; they 

 are of immense utility in keeping under various entomological pests that annoy 

 the farmer, but they have in some parts increased most rapidly, and finding 

 in the produce of the land a sure and ample supply of food, they have resorted 

 to that and do occasionally much damage, so much so that in some districts 

 anti-crow associations have been formed for their destruction, and many 

 thousands are annually killed. The indiscriminate destruction of rapacious 

 animals and birds by game-keepers has led to the increase of other species, 

 and of one in particular, the common wood-pigeon ; this bird hi some localities 

 has become exceedingly numerous, assembling in flocks of many hundreds, and 

 in whiter doing very great injury to the turnip crops ; anti-pigeon associations 

 have also been formed, and in Berwickshire no less than 8000 were destroyed in 

 one yeai'. 



